Ache
by Polly Lynn
Summary: "It's complicated, except it isn't. Nothing here is complicated." One-shot set between Always (4 x 23) and After the Storm (5 x 01).


Title: Ache

Rating: M

WC: ~1600

Summary: "It's complicated, except it isn't. Nothing here is complicated." One-shot set between Always (4 x 23) and After the Storm (5 x 01).

* * *

She stumbles in the darkness, shivering and clumsy and exhausted.

She knows this place. His home. She _knows_ it with the familiarity of a hundred visits. Meals and moments standing around waiting for him. Impatience and lingering. Hovering in the doorway and letting them haul her into this world. His mother. Alexis, though not lately.

Him. She knows this place because she knows _him_. He belongs here, and he's wanted her for so long. Wanted her _here._

Nothing's changed. This is his home. Familiar and strange. Profoundly different in the darkness of all the things her body aches with. Silence and the dangling sleeves of a dress shirt that still carries his scent.

She stutters forward on her toes, trying for grace that's far beyond her when she hurts like this. She curses into her cupped palm when her knees find sharp corners and her toes meet solid, uncompromising right angles.

She blinks, moving from darkness into the sudden bright of lights that burn in strange places. Merry blue and red and green night lights that come from all directions to hit her knees. Some soft glow high over the sink.

She wants ice. Water. Something. She aches and burns everywhere. Good and bad. Satisfied and desperate. Aching.

"Beckett."

She whirls to face him. Bangs her hip hard on the counter and cries out. He's there in an instant. The need for him rises faster than that. She's been gone for a minute. A hundred seconds and she doesn't know how she's lasted.

But he's there now. Beside her. Towering over her. Holding her fast and turning her this way and that.

"You were gone." He drags his mouth over hers. Heavy, imprecise kisses that claim. "I thought you . . . you . . . Jesus, Beckett, you're _hurt._"

He pulls away from her. He reaches out. Back. One hand fumbles somewhere behind him and there's more light. Something soft beneath a bank of cabinets, and she realizes he's naked.

"Kate," he whispers it over and over. His hands travel her body. He works open the collar of the shirt. He lifts the fabric free of her skin, uncovering every mark. Every last piece of her that aches. There was no time before. No time, and she wishes he weren't seeing her like this. Not here. Not tonight.

"Kate, my God. He nearly killed you." He's frantic. Worried and apologetic. _Angry. _With her. With himself. With Maddox and Gates and Montgomery and the fact that he woke up alone. That he thought she'd gone. "He got _away_."

He's dumbfounded. She hears her own voice. Necessary words at the time. Just enough because she _needed _him. She needed him back, and nothing else mattered. But she doesn't even know how to begin with the rest of it. How to tell him the story. How to listen to his.

She's sorry. She's cold and shaking and sick to her stomach every time she closes her eyes and the street rushes up to slam the life out of her. She hurts everywhere, and she can't believe he's lied to her all this time.

It's complicated, except it isn't. Nothing here is complicated.

His hands run down her arms and his breath is ragged and hot, fanning over her shoulder as he turns her to press close behind. The broad warmth of his chest, solid against her shoulder blades. He whispers curses and her name.

Want ripples through. It murmurs over her as his hand slides up her thigh now. As his fingers fan wide over her belly.

The last of his shirt slips free of her wrist and pools on the floor. The crimson flag of surrender. Her gaze follows helplessly. Her head tips to the side and she's liquid. Barely standing. The rasp of his cheek catches her skin and she feels him hard against her hip. She is all over sensation. A gasp. A howl. Something like a bitten-off laugh pouring out of her.

"It's not . . ." His voice is hoarse at her jaw. "Not funny. You're hurt. You're _hurt._"

"Hurt," she echoes. She is. She's hurt all over, and everywhere his fingers land—every part of him that presses into her now—is another piece claimed by Maddox by thirteen years and the people who killed her mother.

"_Hurt_," she says again, fierce this time as she drags his hand hard up her body. As she presses his palm to her breast. As she squeezes and tugs. Works his hand under her own and urges him on. "Hurt. No. Castle, _no.__"_

But it does. Everything hurts, and this isn't her. Pain and the desire flaring with it. This has never been her until this moment. She wants to feel this. Every twinge and pulse and sensation.

She winds one arm up and back. Around his neck and her fingers fist in his hair. It's the best kind of agony as her spine arches and he groans. As her own voice tangles with his and her cries get lost between his pleas. She tips her head, back and up. Her hips circle, a hard grind against him. She sucks at his skin.

"_Fuck_." His mouth descends hard. His teeth catch the swell of her lip. A sharp point of clarity. He's holding on. "Stop. Beckett _stop._"

"No." One hand drops to his side. Her nails find his hip and drag. She's opening wounds. Making him hurt, too, and leaving rooftop grit behind. "I want . . . I _want . . .__" _

It's caught in her throat. A litany of things. Filthy and longing and fucked up and exactly right for this moment. For them her and now. Exactly right and too much. _Too much. _

"_This.__"_ It's his voice, not hers, when the silence shatters. A single, burning word in her ear.

Time comes and goes. She loses it. Every thread holding her here is snipped. The time is just _gone _and then she's back. He has her bent over the counter, belly down and breasts flat against the stone. The cold is shocking. It whites out the sensation of scrapes and bruises and battered ribs. It's a brilliant sheet of relief. Everything that isn't him gone at once. Everything that isn't _them. _

"You want this, Beckett?"

It's taunting. A strange imitation of the way he's gotten under her skin every single day for the last four years. He leans over her. He locks his fingers around her wrists and stretches her arms wide. Curls her own fingers around the far edge of the counter and barely breathes something like _good girl _when she stays put. There's fury in that. Rage and protest stuck somewhere, but she's overwhelmed. Motionless and practically whimpering as he slides her thighs apart.

He's teasing her. On the surface of it, he is. Dragging his fingers, front to back between her legs. Nudging against her and she feels the wordless groan shudder through him. It's punishment for him, too. She stutters out a laugh and he makes her pay. The sharp thrust of a single finger inside her, then it's gone. She wants to scream.

"Do you _want_ this?" He presses closer, even though it's impossible. His fingers drag down her sides. They stay her hips as his own buck sharply against her. "Do you?"

Every hint of teasing is gone. It's a black kind of demand that scrapes raw inside her. The thing beneath the blankness of his face when he turned his shoulders and barred her way. When he left her adrift, away from him. Outside.

_Beckett, what do you want_.

"Yes." There's hardly air for it. Hardly breath, but it's enough.

He's buried in her. One motion and no possibility of resistance, wet and ready as she is, but it hurts. It's been a long, _long _time. Had been, anyway, and she's weak-kneed and sore from the first time.

It hurts, but her body is singing with it. Hot skin and breath. Cool, ungiving stone beneath her and every sensation is more. The way his words feather behind her ear. Dirty encouragement. Awe and praise she shouldn't want, but it all chases shivers over her scalp. The scent of him, rawer now with just the promise of cologne underneath sweat and round one. Underneath the traces of herself lingering on him.

She cries out, sharper than ever. He hits something inside her. Some deeper place, higher and harder than _anything, _ and she cries out, the only release for a blinding flare of light and shattered glass, so good.

_So good, _but he stops dead. _Kate. _He tries to stop, but she finds some furious will somewhere. She watches her knuckles go white as she slams back into him.

"Castle. Want this." Her voice drops. A low, rumbling pitch that convinces him. Breaks him, too, or something. He thrusts hard. Harder still and every hint of pain is gone. Gone and gone and gone until her heart starts beating again. Until the breath rushes back into her and they're slithering to the floor.

They're falling together. Sprawled out weak and tangled and there's nothing but hard surfaces. Awful and nothing for it. She aches and he rolls her on top of his own body. She bites him. A weak scrape of teeth on skin. She doesn't want his misplaced chivalry.

"Beckett, stop." He pins her arms to the floor, either side of her hips. "Will you fucking _stop_? I can't . . ." His voice breaks and his eyes fill. Silver trails spill from the corners, and it's not even tears. It's something bigger and more painful. His fingers hover and never land like he's afraid to touch her. Like he's afraid of _her. _ "Jesus, Kate. Everywhere. You're _hurt._"

"No." She kisses him. Teases his lips and coaxes until he kisses her back. It's not a lie. She hurts everywhere and she doesn't. "Not now. Not here, Castle. Nothing hurts."

* * *

A/N: WTF?, you might ask. I have no answer.


End file.
